Raven's Hollow

Chapter Six

“Slow down. Let me get this straight.” Sadie’s former fiancé, Tyler Blume, gave her a light shake and sent Eli, several feet behind her, a fulminating look. “Someone broke into Bellam Manor, placed a dead raven on your doorstep and wrote a message in red on the wall. This person, who was still inside when you arrived, then proceeded to knock you down and fled the scene on foot with Eli in pursuit.”

Sadie eased free of his increasingly tight grip. “Something like that, yes.”

Ty’s ice-blue eyes met the shadowed green of his cousin’s. “I gather you lost him.”

Eli’s expression gave nothing away. “Unfortunately.”

“So he was faster than you.”

“Apparently.”

“And smarter.”

“If by that you mean he had a head start and a vehicle hidden in the woods, then yes, he was smarter.”

“Were you able to obtain the license plate number of this hidden vehicle?”

“No.”

“So all in all, your presence at the manor wasn’t overly helpful.”

Sadie drew her iPhone from her shoulder bag. “I didn’t come into town so you and your cousin could have a pissing contest, Ty.”

“You shouldn’t have come into town at all,” he fired back. “Why didn’t you call me from the manor?”

She wagged her phone. “I did, three times. There was no signal, and by the time I got one, we were in the Hollow.” She made a frustrated gesture. “I heard the vehicle Eli mentioned roar off.”

“Direction?”

“East,” Eli told him. “Toward Raven’s Hollow.”

A four-year stint in the army had taught Ty how to control his facial muscles, if not his entire expression.

“I’ll need to inspect the site, gather more facts. You took pictures of the bird and the wall. Kudos for that. But Eli can’t provide me with a license plate number, and neither of you can describe the intruder, leaving me with nothing except a dead raven, an eastbound vehicle and a single painted word to go on.”

“It was a truck.” Eli kept his tone conversational.

Ty’s dark blond eyebrows came together. “What was?”

“The eastbound vehicle. I’d guess a Dodge Ram, twenty, maybe thirty years old. I’d also go with stolen since the guy was smart enough to send the raven-card email Sadie told you about from a toss-away phone.” He shrugged at his cousin’s glare. “Police computer. I linked to Sadie’s office line. There’s no owner registered on her last incoming. Sender’s got a plan, and it doesn’t involve being identified.”

She’d known that, Sadie thought, of course she had. She’d been a journalist far too long to delude herself. “I don’t suppose you have any idea, beyond terrifying me, what that plan might entail?”

She felt Eli’s gaze on her face. “Working on it.”

Across the cramped room, Ty drummed a pen on his blotter. “Tell me, cousin, how do you determine twenty or thirty years old in a truck?”

“Three back-breaking summers spent on my grandfather’s farm in Idaho. Why are you wet?”

Ty frowned down at his soaked shirt and pants. “I—was hungry, stepped out. Figured the diner might be serving on emergency power.”

“It’s after eleven,” Sadie remarked. “Johnny’s closes at ten.”

“The time thing didn’t occur until I was halfway there. I was heading back when I spotted a couple kids outside Dorothy Leamer’s antique store and made a detour.”

Eli grinned. “Does she still keep her cash float in a cigar box under the counter?”

“It’s her lucky box. She’s been robbed a dozen or more times, but she always gets the money and the box back. Neither thing made it out of the store tonight. Unfortunately, the kids ran off before I could identify them.”

“Making you and Eli even in the ‘oops’ department.” Sadie indicated the curb outside. “The lamp the intruder used is in my Land Rover. I picked it up after he took off, but you could still check it for fingerprints.”

A muscle in Ty’s jaw ticked. “You figure there’ll be any to find?” he asked Eli.

“Doubt it. You might get a clue from the bird. It was shot through the head.”

“Did he use blood or paint for the wall message?”

“Paint. There wouldn’t have been enough blood in a single raven to write a message that large.”

“I assume you secured the scene.”

“Do I really need to answer that?”

The tick in Ty’s jaw deepened. “I think you should stay in town tonight, Sadie.”

“And leave Molly alone out on the point? Answer’s no.”

“Fine.” He yanked out his smartphone. “Is she at the manor?”

“Not when we were there. Save your battery, Ty. I’ve left five unanswered messages. All I can think of is that she went somewhere after work, turned her phone off and hasn’t turned it back on yet.”

“Right, then I’ll just drive you home myself and spend the night.... Crap!” He scowled at his beeping cell, then breathed out and punched Talk. “Raven’s Hollow Police Station. Chief Blume.”

Leaving him to the call, Sadie joined Eli at the rain-streaked station window and studied his face. “Even in shadow, I can see the wheels turning. Talk to me, Lieutenant. Why would someone want to torment me with words that read like threats, and a raven with a bullet in its head?”

“Mine forever. Says it all, don’t you think?”

She did, actually, or would have if she’d been willing to take it that far.

Ty’s voice cut in. “Stay calm, Liz. I’ll be right there.” Frustration etched itself into his handsome features. “A six-year-old girl ran off in pursuit of her new puppy after it wiggled through a window. Now puppy and child are both lost. Mother’s hysterical. Are you sure you secured the scene?” he demanded of Eli.

“I didn’t ditch my badge and training at the state line. Everything you need to see will be there in the morning.”

His cousin’s response came in the form of a snarl. “See that it is.” Giving Sadie’s arm an awkward pat, he said, “Watch your back.” Then he shot an accusing look in Eli’s direction. “Unless you want a knife in it.”

As soon as he was out the door, Sadie plastered a serene smile on her lips. “Well, that was horrible.”

“Can I say I told you so?”

“Only if you want to walk to wherever it is you plan to sleep tonight.”

“I was originally thinking Rooney’s cottage.”

“In that case, you’re facing a long and treacherous hike.”

He chuckled. “I haven’t checked out the bulldog yet, Sadie. You know how Rooney gets stuck on a point.”

“So...Ty’s sofa it is. Good luck with that.”

“Uh-huh.” When she turned away, he tugged on her hair and swung her gently back around. “You know where I’ll be sleeping tonight, and there won’t be any old men, dogs or hostile sofas involved. Your front door lock’s been compromised, Sadie.”

Reaching behind her, Sadie extricated his hand from her hair. “You’re trying to frighten me into letting you sleep at my place. Not only is that an unworthy tactic, it’s also an unnecessary one, because while I don’t appreciate your high-handed I’m-a-cop-and-you’re-not attitude, I do in fact recognize that I’ve been threatened, and there was both a bullet and blood involved. So let’s slide past the sleeping arrangements and the mind games, drive back to Bellam Manor and make sure Molly and Cocoa are safe.”

The hand that had been in her hair moved to trap her chin. Eli’s green eyes stared straight into hers. “This guy doesn’t want Molly or Cocoa, Sadie. That’s not what it’s about.”

She held his gaze. “What aren’t you saying? I’m totally terrified to ask. In my experience, crazy people will steamroll anyone who gets in their way. Or so the theory generally goes.”

“Generally,” Eli agreed. “Except this isn’t general, it’s specific. And in terms of the email card you received, it’s a virtual carbon copy of what happened to Laura a week before she was murdered.”

* * *

TELLING SADIEWHAThad suddenly clicked in his mind did more than shock her into silence. It catapulted Eli back to the night his stepsister—Sadie’s seventeen-year-old cousin, Laura—had died.

Sadie’s aunt had married Eli’s widowed father when Eli was ten. The melding of their families had been a seamless affair. But no doubt about it, Bellams and Blumes living under the same roof in Raven’s Cove had been like Christmas on the local grapevine.

Eli and two friends from school had gone to a movie in the Cove the night of the murder. Laura had been babysitting Sadie, but she’d driven to the Hollow in her mother’s cherry-red ’69 Mustang with a promise to pick them up as soon as her aunt and uncle returned home.

He could have told her not to bother, Eli thought now. Less of a hassle to walk or let someone closer come and get them, but there’d been intermittent hailstorms all day, and face it, what adolescent boy would turn down a ride in the coolest car in town?

So he and his friends had wandered over to the arcade to wait. They’d slain dragons, bludgeoned knights and smashed castle walls, until, finally, the manager had come in and told them he was shutting down.

Eli had felt the first prickle of fear at that moment. He hadn’t known why, not exactly. It hadn’t been until later that he’d remembered hearing Laura on the phone three days earlier, pleading with someone to stop pestering her.

Drama queen, he’d figured at the time. People called Laura a diva, and, what the hell, she’d stuck her tongue out at the handset after slamming it down, so how serious could the call have been?

He’d gotten his answer that weekend when, feeling sick and guilty, he’d trudged into the hollow to search for her. Everyone had been looking by then, yet oddly enough, the only person he’d bumped into in the dense woods was Sadie.

He’d known something was terribly wrong, because he’d snuck into Laura’s room and discovered a card with two ravens on it in the wastepaper basket under her desk. She’d torn it up, but the pieces had been easily reassembled, and once whole, had made even a fourteen-year-old boy’s blood run cold.

The scrawl inside had read MY LOVE in bold red letters. There’d been no signature, and of course, nothing on or in it could be traced. Not to the boyfriend Laura had recently broken up with or to anyone in the Cove or the Hollow.

But someone had written those words. Someone who’d either sent the card or slipped it to her before she’d died. Someone, Eli reflected darkly, who’d sent Sadie an eerily similar message—two full decades later.

* * *

SADIELETHIMdrive her Land Rover up the treacherous road to Bellam Manor. They didn’t talk much, which was normal enough for Eli and perfectly fine with her. Staving off terror took concentration and strong mental locks.

Two ravens, though, on two separate cards, two decades apart. One imprisoned, one free. And no signature in either case.

Determined not to think about where this was leading, she attempted to contact Molly again. But her cousin’s voice mail picked up, and as it did, frustration slipped past the knot of fear in her throat. She turned in her seat. “Why didn’t I hear about Laura’s card before tonight, Eli? Or the phone call you say she got?”

He kept his eyes on the road and his tone mild. “You were seven years old. You found her body in Raven’s Bog. Literally tripped on her hand and went down. The doctors in both the Hollow and the Cove agreed you must be in shock. And I repeat—only seven.”

“A resilient seven.” She tapped an impatient thumbnail on her phone. “The only call I’ve gotten came in conjunction with the email that was sent to me today at the Chronicle.”

“Still a call.”

She thought back. “The voice was computer altered. I didn’t recognize it.”

“Male?”

“Inasmuch as a synthesized voice can have a gender, yes. In any case, the intruder at the manor was male. And don’t you dare suggest an accomplice. This is twisted enough already. Whoever hit Laura with a tire iron left her and her car in what used to be the heart of the hollow. But twenty years ago, the road we were on tonight—which is the only drivable road from end to end—was nothing more than a goat path. So, obvious next question. How did her car wind up in the bog?”

“The consensus was that Laura let the killer get into the car. Once inside, he forced her to drive to Raven’s Bog. They exited the car, he struck her, then left her body, the Mustang and the murder weapon at the scene.”

“Do you know where the tire iron came from?”

“An auto scrap yard in Bangor.”

“So, summing up, there were no fingerprints on the murder weapon, there was no blood in the car and nothing but... God, why am I doing this?” Unbelieving, Sadie drilled her index fingers into her temples. “It’s insane, like Laura’s murderer—who’s apparently been in the area all along. Whoever he is, this guy’s a volcanic time bomb on a really slow tick. And he seems to have it in for Bellam females.” When Eli didn’t respond, she lowered her hands. “A little reassurance would be nice here, Lieutenant— before I totally freak out!”

He made the final turn to the manor. “Would it help if I said we could be dealing with a copycat?”

“Which would be better—how exactly?”

“Different perpetrator, potentially different...motive.”

She pounced. “You hesitated before you said ‘motive.’”

“I hesitated because something just blew off one of the manor’s towers and across my line of vision.”

“You were going to say ‘outcome,’ weren’t you? Potentially different outcome. As in he might shoot me instead of using a tire iron.”

“Sadie...”

“I know.” She went back to pushing on her temples. “Freaking myself out again. I need to refocus, and lucky me, I see a light in Molly’s window. I can distract myself by reading her the riot act for turning off her phone.”

“Isn’t shouting at Molly a bit like kicking a puppy?”

“I said read, not shout. All I really want to do is make sure she’s safe. Because I don’t believe, and neither do you, that there’s a copycat at work here. It’s twenty years later, Eli, and somebody’s doing to me almost exactly what he did to Laura. But who’s to say that after such a long hiatus, this person doesn’t have a different plan in mind? How do we know I’m the only Bellam he intends to threaten? Or kill?”

* * *

HESATINthe dark, with the storm shrieking around him, and he breathed. In and out, in and out.

It was all about making the right moves at the right time. He wanted Sadie. He needed Sadie to know he wanted her. But he also needed her to know she’d hurt him.

Love and fear and anger fought a bitter, three-way battle in his head these days. Twenty years ago, he’d discovered that a sleeping monster lived deep inside him. What if the monster woke up and consumed him? He might kill Sadie the way he’d killed Laura.

Would he, though? Could he? He loved Sadie so very, very much. He saw himself spending the rest of his life with her. Was it possible this newer, deeper love might stop the monster from clawing its way out?

Possibly, but one thing he’d learned tonight was that accidents could happen when you carried a gun.

The raven should have been a symbol of his love. He hadn’t meant to kill it, but at least the bullet hadn’t wound up in Sadie’s head. He could take comfort in that.

When he started to shake, he dropped his face into his hands. He was tired, so damnably tired. Should he try to sleep? Did he dare? Or would the monster know and seize the opportunity to go on a rampage?

To go on a witch-hunt?

Chapter Seven

“The battery in her cell phone died.”

Twenty minutes after they walked through her cousin’s front door. Sadie returned to the thickly shadowed room Molly called a parlor.

“She stayed in town to have dinner with a friend who’s afraid of thunderstorms. Neat, tidy, logical. Mystery solved, Lieutenant.”

“One mystery, anyway.” Eli held up and examined a double-edged dagger. “Any reason she collects and displays lethal weapons?”

“Witch’s tools,” Sadie corrected. “That dagger you’re holding is an athame. Its white-handled counterpart is a boline.” She swept a hand along the sideboard. “Chalice, ritual candles, tarot cards, protective crystals—dog.”